SMC Networks TigerSwitch 10 SMC6724L3, Installation Manual

Page: 34 / 82

N
ETWORK
P
LANNING
2-6
Using Layer 3 Routing
VLANs can significantly enhance network performance and security.
However, if you use conventional routers to interconnect VLANs, you can
lose most of your performance advantage. The Fast Ethernet Routing
Switch provides wire-speed routing, which allows you to eliminate your
conventional IP routers, except for a router to handle non-IP protocols
and a gateway router linked to the WAN. Just assign an IP address to any
VLANs that need to communicate. The switch will continue to segregate
Layer 2 traffic based on VLANs, but will now provide inter-VLAN
connections for IP applications. This switch will perform IP routing for
specified VLAN groups, a directly connected subnetwork, a remote IP
subnetwork or host address, a subnetwork broadcast address, a switch IP
address on a specific IP subnetwork, or an IP multicast address.
Figure 2-5. IP Routing for Unicast Traffic
IP Network 1
R&D
VLAN 1
VLAN 2
Testing
IP Network 2